The politics of nostalgia in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Bacigalupi’s the Windup Girl

Abstract

This study explores the representation of nostalgia in two dystopian novels, the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) and the American writer Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009). While there are major works tracing the themes of longing for home and belonging in contemporary fiction, there is no current study adequately addressing the connection between dystopian novel and nostalgia. Therefore, this study fills a gap in the existing scholarship by virtue of its focus on the dystopian novel. Building on the contemporary interdisciplinary approaches on nostalgia and dystopian tradition, this M.A. thesis investigates the political implications of yearning for the past. Through examining our ways of relating to the past, Oryx and Crake and The Windup Girl question two arguments that are central to utopian fiction: a return to nature argument and scientific and technological utopianism. Both novels not only problematize these contradictory possibilities, but they also propose and contest a third alternative: the possibility of a future that brings together human and non-human. I argue that Atwood and Bacigalupi’s novels are a meditation on utopian thought and a nuanced exploration of the experience of nostalgia.